Cipher

Cipher (pronounced sahy-fer)

(1) Zero (archaic).

(2) Any of the Arabic numerals or figures (historic use only).

(3) To use figures or numerals arithmetically (historic use only).

(4) To write in or as in cipher.

(5) To calculate numerically; figure (historic use only).

(6) To convert into cipher.

(7) A numeric character (historic use only).

(8) Any text character (historic use only).

(9) A combination or interweaving of letters, as the initials of a name; a device; a monogram.

(10) A method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning.

(11) In cryptography, a system using an algorithm that converts letters or sequences of bits into cipher-text.

(12) A grouping of three digits in a number, especially when delimited by commas or periods.

(13) In music, a fault in an organ valve which causes a pipe to sound continuously without the key having been pressed.

(14) In music, slang for a hip-hop jam session (although some etymologists thing this is wholly unrelated to cipher’s accepted lineage.

(15) The path (usually vaguely circular) shared cannabis takes through a group.

(16) Someone or something of no importance.

(17) As cipher.exe, an external filter command in some versions of Microsoft operating systems, used to encrypt and decrypt data on drives using HPFS (High-Performance File System & NTFS (New Technology File System).

Late 1300s: From the Middle English siphre & cifre, from the Old French cyfre & cyffre (nought, zero) (which endures in Modern French as chiffre) from the Medieval Latin cifra & ciphra, (like the Spanish and Italian cifra), ultimately from the Arabic صِفْر‎ (ṣifr) (zero, empty), from صَفَرَ‎ (ṣafara) (to be empty), a loan-translation of the Sanskrit śūnyā-s (empty) The alternative spelling is cypher.  The word came to Europe in the twelfth century with the arrival of Arabic numerals.  Meaning first "zero", by the fifteenth century it had come to mean "any numeral" and then, following the use in French & Italian, "secret way of writing; coded message", a sense which in English emerged by the 1520s, the origin of the shift being the early diplomatic codes, often creations which substituted numbers for letters.  The meaning "the key to a cipher or secret writing" was by 1885 short for “cipher key”, a phrase in use since 1835.  Drawing from the sense of “zero”, the figurative sense of "something or someone of no value, consequence, or power" dates from the 1570s.

The verb in the sense of “doing arithmetic" (with Arabic numerals) emerged in the 1520s and was derived from the noun while the transitive sense (reckon in figures, cast up) was first noted in 1860 and the specific sense of a cipher code being something which might be associated with the occult characters was first attested in 1563.  The verb decipher (an obviously essential companion to cipher) in the 1520s had a now obsolete meaning in mathematics (find out, discover) but by the 1540s it meant "interpret” in the sense of rendering a coded message (a cipher) back into the language or origin by use of a cipher-key.  It may, at least in part, be a loan-translation from the French déchiffrer.  From circa 1600, it moved beyond the literal to the transferred sense of "discover or explain the meaning of what is difficult to understand", the sense of "succeed in reading what is written in obscure or partially obliterated characters" used by 1710.  Cipher is a noun & verb; ciphering is a noun; the noun plural is ciphers.

German Enigma M4 encryption machine.  Introduced for commercial purposes in 1923, it was used by the German Navy from 1926, all branches of the service adopting it by 1935.  Built initially with three rotors, a fourth was added in 1941.

Although used by the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) throughout the war, work by Polish mathematicians, aided by French intelligence, had enabled Polish cryptographers to break the codes and thus read German military traffic between 1932-1938, at which point additional layers of complexity were added.  In 1939, as war approached, the Poles passed their work to the allies where the code-breaking continued, culminating in the “Ultra” decrypts which would be of such value during the war.

The text "Lindsay Lohan" encrypted using different ciphers:

Standard Vigenère cipher: Nzlslig Nffpg
Beaufort cipher: Rjlmbik Rdrpg
Variant Beaufort cipher: Jrpozsq Jxjlu
Trithemius cipher: Ljpgwfe Swqky

In the decryption process, the British made some of the first use at scale of electronic computers and so secret was the project regarded that the protocols of the existing highest level of secrecy in the machinery of government, “Most Secret”, was thought inadequate and “Ultra Secret” was thus created with a tiny distribution list.  Also deployed was the coat-and-dagger trick of the misleading code-name Boniface, used in a way to convey the impression the British had a master spy they called “Boniface” controlling a network of spies throughout the political, military and industrial structures of the Reich.  The ruse proved successful, the OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the German naval high command) never taking seriously the suggestion their codes had been broken, instead repeatedly combing their organisation for spies.  The existence of the British code-breaking project and the volume and importance of the Ultra decrypts to the war effort wasn’t widely known until an (at times misleading) account was published  in 1974 in The Ultra Secret by a former RAF (Royal Air Force) officer, FW Winterbotham (1897-1990).  Although criticised in detail, what was revealed did compel a re-evaluation of some of the conclusions drawn by historians about political and military matters during the war.

Cryptic

Cryptic (pronounced krip-tik)

(1) Deliberately mysterious in meaning; puzzling.

(2) A message which is abrupt; terse; short, ambiguous, obscure (ie the effect rather than the intent).

(3) Of things secret; the occult.

(4) Involving use of a code or cipher etc (the stuff of cryptography).

(5) In zoology, fitted for concealing; serving to camouflage (applied especially to the coloring or shape of animals); living in a cavity or small cave (also as cryptozoic).

(6) In cruciverbalism (the compilation of crosswords), the puzzle, or a clue in such a puzzle, using, in addition to definitions, wordplay such as anagrams, homophones and hidden words to indicate solutions (the “cryptic crossword” usually distinguished from the “standard”, “basic” or “simple”.

(7) In biology, apparently identical, but actually genetically distinct.

(7) In biology, as “cryptic ovulation”, a phenomenon noted in certain species where the female shows no perceptible signals indicating a state of fertility (also as “concealed ovulation”).

1595-1605: From the Late Latin crypticus, from the Ancient Greek κρυπτικός (kruptikós) (fit from concealing), from κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden), from κρύπτω (krúptō) (to hide).  The construct was crypt + -ic.  Crypt was from the Latin crypta (vault), again from the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden).  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The alternative spelling cryptick is obsolete.  Cryptic is a noun and adjective, cryptical is an adjective and cryptically an adverb; the noun plural is cryptics.

Cryptic’s synonyms can include ambiguous, arcane, enigmatic, equivocal, incomprehensible, mysterious, strange, vague, veiled, abstruse, apocryphal, cabalistic, dark, esoteric, evasive, hidden, inexplicable, murky, mystic, mystical & perplexing.  However, it’s often necessary to distinguish between that thought deliberately obscure in meaning and messages either badly written or too brief for the meaning to be clear.  The familiar modern meaning “mysterious or enigmatic” is surprisingly modern, emerging only in the 1920s.  The noun cryptography (the art & science of writing in secret characters) sates from the 1650s and was either from the French cryptographie or directly from the Modern Latin cryptographia, the construct being the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden) + graphia (of or relating to writing), the practitioner or code-breaker (the latter sense now more common and known also as crypto-analysts) being a cryptographer, the discipline cryptography (or cryptoanalytics) and the adjectival form the cryptographic.

Novelty birthday card on the theme of Freaky Friday (2003).

In English, the Ancient Greek κρυπτός (kruptós) (hidden) proved productive.  A cryptogram can be just about any form of puzzle although as a commercial name (sometimes as crypto-gram) it has been used (on the model of telegram a la the strippergram, gorillagram, kissogram etc).  The idea of cryptocurrency gained the name from (1) the use of cryptography when storing the underlying data in the blockchain (a big-machine distributed database) and (2) the notion of the blockchain as a secure crypt (vault).  In biology, cryptobiosis is a state of life in which all metabolic activity is temporarily halted (a cryptobiont any organism capable of cryptobiosis).  In critical political discourse, crypto- was used (crypto-communist, crypto-Nazi, crypto-fascist etc) to label someone as something they were attempting to conceal.  In medicine, the unfortunate condition cryptorchism (the plural (where required) cryptorchisms) was the failure of one or both testes to descend into the scrotum.  In geology, a cryptoclastic rock is one composed of minute or microscopic fragments.

Pope Benedict XVI with Cardinal George Pell (1941-2023), Australia 2008. 

In his theological writings Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) could be cryptic but when speaking to his flock of 1.3 billion-odd, his thoughts were expressed usually in simple language, his meaning clear.  Not all pontiffs have managed this so Benedict’s pontificate of plain-speaking was welcome, even if his messages didn’t please all.  Even so however, he never manage to issue anything with the raw honesty Pope Adrian VI (1459–1523; pope 1522-1523) showed in the instructions he gave to his nuncio, Francesco Chieregati (1479-1539) his representative at the Diet of Nuremberg, a gathering of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire convened in 1552.  Adrian’s words, a statement of repentance unique in the Church’s history was an admission of the need to reform the corrupted institution which instructed Chieregati to make clear:

“…we frankly confess that God permits this persecution to afflict His Church because of the sins of men, especially of the priests and prelates of the Church. For certainly the hand of the Lord has not been shortened so that He cannot save, but sins separate us from Him and hide His face from us so that He does not hear. Scripture proclaims that the sins of the people are a consequence of the sins of the priests, and therefore (as Chrysostom says) our Savior, about to cure the ailing city of Jerusalem, first entered the Temple to chastise first the sins of the priests, like the good doctor who cures a sickness at its source.

We know that for many years many abominable things have occurred in this Holy See, abuses in spiritual matters, transgressions of the commandments, and finally in everything a change for the worse (et omnia denique in perversum mutata). No wonder that the illness has spread from the head to the members, from the Supreme Pontiffs to the prelates below them. All of us (that is, prelates and clergy), each one of us, have strayed from our paths; nor for a long time has anyone done good; no, not even one.

Therefore, we must all give glory only to God and humble our souls before Him, and each one of us must consider how he has fallen and judge himself, rather than await the judgment of God with the rod of His anger. As far as we are concerned, therefore, you will promise that we will expend every effort to reform first this Curia, whence perhaps all this evil has come, so that, as corruption spread from that place to every lower place, the good health and reformation of all may also issue forth.

We consider ourselves all the more bound to attend to this, the more we perceive the entire world longing for such a reformation. (As we believe others have said to you) we never sought to gain this papal office. Indeed we preferred, so far as we could, to lead a private life and serve God in holy solitude, and we would have certainly declined this papacy except that the fear of God, the uncorrupt manner of our election, and the dread of impending schism because of our refusal forced us to accept it. Therefore we submitted to the supreme dignity not from a lust for power, nor for the enrichment of our relatives, but out of obedience to the divine will, in order to reform His deformed bride, the Catholic Church, to aid the oppressed, to encourage and honor learned and virtuous men who for so long have been disregarded, and finally to do everything else a good pope and a legitimate successor of blessed Peter should do.

Yet no man should be surprised if he does not see all errors and abuses immediately corrected by us. For the sickness is of too long standing, nor is it a single disease, but varied and complex. We must advance gradually to its cure and first attend to the more serious and more dangerous ills, lest in a desire to reform everything at the same time we throw everything into confusion. All sudden changes (says Aristotle) are dangerous to the state. He who scrubs too much draws blood.

We know how prejudicial it has been to the honor of God and the salvation and edification of souls that ecclesiastical benefices, especially those involving the care and direction of souls, for so long have been given to unworthy men.”

Probably plenty of popes could over the centuries have been justified in saying much the same thing but if any were tempted, none did.  Benedict did of course issue the odd statement of (carefully drafted) apology for this and that but they bore the mark of a lawyer’s careful vetting to avoid legal troubles rather than a sinner repenting and seeking forgiveness.  Most of the Church’s problems and scandals were of course not of his making and it was unfortunate his time on the throne came when scandals stretching back decades were being exposed because the publicity these attracted meant there was less attention paid to some of Benedict’s genuinely interesting thoughts on the state of Western Civilization.  Unfortunately, there were occasions on which he should perhaps have been rather more cryptic when discussing these matters, such as the famous address delivered at the University of Regensburg in 2006, entitled Faith, Reason and the University, none of which attracted the attention of the popular press except the one notorious sentence:

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The comment was originally written in 1391 as an encapsulation of the view of the Manuel II (1350–1425; Byzantine emperor 1391-1425) but the thoughts were not new to Benedict and nor was its expression but what one says as an academic theologian is less scrutinized than when it comes from the vicar of Christ on earth.  That one brief fragment from the lecture overshadowed what was a thoughtful warning to Western civilization about its internal threats and contradictions, specifically the retreat from reason in moral and political life.  Among academics, the similarity of Benedict’s ideas to those of the German philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) seemed striking and poignant too, the pope among the last of then generation of Germans who, like Strauss, had seen Nazism, probably the most evil of the totalitarianism which was such a feature of the twentieth century.  In their time, Strauss and Benedict both knew the West was facing a crisis, something identified by the philosopher as the very modern culture which had lost “its faith in reason’s ability to validate its highest aims”, understood as the view that notions of right and wrong are historically variable, changing as intellectual fashions shifted.  The pope knew this as moral relativism and understood that a “crisis of political reason… is a crisis of politics as such” which has relegated moral and political knowledge to the realm of radical subjectivity.

As a historical decline, Benedict traced the retreat from the Reformation, through the liberal theology of the last two-hundred years to the latter-day descent of Christendom to cultural relativism.  That didn’t mean the pope wished to undo the Enlightenment, it was rather that scientific positivism should run in parallel with moral certainty.  It might have been better, certainly for the quality of the press coverage, if Benedict had adhered a little more to one of Strauss’ techniques of didacticism: cultured crypticism.  Strauss held that Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was no proto-Nazi but had written in such an accessible manner that it was simply for the Nazis to twist and appropriate his words for their purposes.  Strauss therefore sought to be more elusive, not wishing to be another misused German philosopher, his words were sometimes cryptic, the meaning able to be unlocked only by the few who had long been immersed.  Benedict too might have been well advised on occasion to remain a little more obscure because he had many interesting things to say which could have been plainly spoken.

Benedict XVI lying in state.

The mortal remains of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were moved early in the morning on Monday 2 January 2023, from his former residence in the Vatican's Mater Eccle.  The archpriest of the basilica, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, received the remains with a liturgical act that lasted about 30 minutes.

Pope Francis conducting the Solemn Requiem Mass.  It's the first time a pope has presided over the funeral of his predecessor since Pius VII (in somewhat different circumstances) attended the funeral of Pius VI in 1802.

A Solemn Requiem Mass was conducted in St Peter’s Square on Thursday 5 January, presided over by Pope Francis.  The readings for the Mass were Isaiah 29:16–19 in Spanish; Psalm 23 sung in Latin; 1 Peter 1: 3–9 in English, and the Gospel of Luke 23: 39–46 read in Italian.  At the conclusion of the service, the coffin was carried to his place of burial in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica, accompanied by the choir singing the Magnificat in Latin.

Nothing

Nothing (pronounced nuhth-ing)

(1) No thing; not anything; naught.

(2) No part, share, or trace (usually followed by of).

(3) Something that is nonexistent; non-existence; nothingness.

(4) Something of no importance or significance.

(5) A trivial action, matter, circumstance, thing, or remark.

(6) A person of little or no importance; a nobody.

(7) Something that is without quantity or magnitude.

(8) A cipher or naught; the quantity or quality of zero.  The value represented by the numeral zero (and the empty set: {}).

(9) As “think nothing of it” and related forms, a procedural response to expressions of thanks.

(10) In no respect or degree; not at all.

(11) Amounting to nothing, as in offering no prospects for satisfaction, advancement, or the like.

(12) In architecture, the contents of a void.

Pre 900: From the Middle English nothyng, noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing & nan þing, from the Old English nāþing, nān þing & naðinc (nānthing & nathing) (nothing (literally “not any thing”), the construct being nān- (not one (source of the modern none)) + þing (thing).  The earlier Old English was nāwiht (nothing (literally “no thing”), related to the Swedish ingenting (nothing (literally “not any thing, no thing”).  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European ne- (not).  In slang and dialectical English there have been many non-standard forms including nuffin, nuffink, nuttin', nuthin, nuthin', nowt, nuthing & nothin'.  Slang has been productive (jack, nada, zip, zippo, zilch, squat, nix) as has vulgar slang (bugger all, jack shit, sod all, fuck all, dick).  Nothing is a noun & adverb and nothingness is a noun; the noun plural is nothings.

Lindsay Lohan wearing nothing (shoes don't count; everybody knows that).  Playboy magazine pictorial, January / February 2012.

The meaning "insignificant thing, a thing of no consequence" emerged circa 1600 (although as an adverb (not at all, in no degree), it was known in late Old English) whereas nothing in the sense of "not at all" had existed since circa 1300.  Phrases in the twentieth century were created as needed: “Nothing to it”, indicating something easily accomplished was noted from 1925 and “nothing to write home about” was really literal, recorded first and with some frequency by censors monitoring the letters written by soldiers serving at the front in Word War I (1914-1918); it appears to date from 1917, the extent of use apparently encouraged by it being a useful phrase exchanged between soldiers by word-of-mouth.  Nothing seems not to have been an adjective until 1961, an evolution of use (or a decline in standards depending on one’s view) which saw words like “rubbish” re-applied in a similar way.  A do-nothing (an idler) is from the 1570s, the noun an adoption from the from the verbal phrase and as an adjective to describe the habitually indolent, it’s noted from 1832.  The adjective good-for-nothing (a worthless person) is from 1711.  The term know-nothing (an ignoramus) is from 1827 and was later applied (though not deliberately) to the US nativist political party, active between 1853-1856, the bulk of which eventually migrated to the Republican Party.  The noun nothingness (non-existence, absence or negation of being) was first used in the 1630s but is most associated with the ideas around nihilism, the exploration of which became a mainstream part of philosophy in the nineteenth century.  Nothingness is distinct from the noun nothingarian which references "one who has no particular belief," especially in religious matters, a descriptive dating from 1789.  It's striking how often in religion, even when factions or denominations are in disputes with one another (sometime actually at war), one thing which seems to unite them is the feeling that whatever their differences, the nothingarians are the worst sinners of all.

The noun nihilist, in a religious or philosophical sense, is from the French nihiliste, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all).  Nihilism, the word first used in 1817, is “the doctrine of negation", initially in reference to religion or morals but later extended universally.  It’s from the German Nihilismus, from the Latin nihil (nothing at all) and was a coining of German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819).  In philosophy, it evolved quickly into an extreme form of skepticism, the political sense of a "rejection of fundamental social and political structures", first used circa 1824 by the German journalist Joseph von Görres (1776-1848).  Most associated with a German school of philosophical thought including (rather misleadingly) GWF Hegel (1770–1831) and (most famously) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), the particular Russian strain was more a revolutionary political movement with something of a premium on violence (that would much influence Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)).  Thus with an initial capital, Nihilism (Nigilizm in the Russian) as used in this context is specific to the movement of Russian revolutionary anarchism 1863-1917 and limited in that the meaning refers to the participants’ disapproval of all social, economic & political possibilities in pre-Soviet Russia; the sense they viewed “nothing” with favor.

A probably inaccurate representation of nothing.  

The idea of nothing, in a universal sense in which literally nothing (energy, matter, space or time) exists is difficult to imagine, imaginable presumably only as infinite blackness, probably because that’s the closest to a two-dimensional representation of the absence of any sense of the special, white implying the existence of light.  That nothingness is perhaps impossible to imagine or visualize doesn’t however prove it’s impossible but the mere fact matter, energy and time now exist in space does imply that because, were there ever nothing, it’s a challenge to explain how anything could have, from nothing, come into existence.  Some have mused that there are aspects of quantum theory which suggest even a state of nothingness can be inherently unstable and where there is instability there is the possibility of an event.  The argument is that under quantum theory, if long enough is allowed to pass (something which, bewilderingly, apparently can happen even if there is no time) then every possible event may happen and from this may evolve energy, matter space or time.  To speak of a time scale in all of this is irrelevant because (1) time may not exist and (2) infinity may exist but it can for administrative purposes be thought of as a very long time.  The intriguing link between time starting and energy, matter or space coming into existence as a consequence is that at that point (in time), it may be the only time “now” could exist in the absence of the past and future so everything would happen at the same time.  Clearly, the conditions operative at that point would be unusual so, anything could happen. 

That is of course wholly speculative but in recent decades, the “string theorists” have extended and refined their mathematical models to a degree which not long ago would have been thought impossible so some modelling of a unique point of “now” in nothing would be interesting and the basic framework of that would seem to demand the mathematics of a model which would describe what conditions would have to prevail in order for there truly to be nothing.  That may or may not be possible but might be an interesting basis from which to work for those trying to explain things like dark matter & dark energy, either or both of which also may or may not exist.  Working with the existing universe seems not to be helpful in developing theories about the nature of all this supposedly missing (or invisible) matter and energy whereas were one, instead of working backwards as it were, instead to start with nothing and then work out how to add what seems to be missing (while remaining still not visible), the result might be interesting and one thing which seems not much discussed is the notion the famous "dark energy" may be time itself.

It’s not a new discussion.  The thinkers from Antiquity were known to ponder the philosophers’ traditional concerns such as “why are we here?” and “what is the meaning of life?” but they also realized a more basic matter was “why does anything exist instead of there being nothing?” and for thousands of years this has been “explained” as the work of gods or a god but that really not a great deal of help.  In the Western tradition, this basic question seems not to have bothered angst-ridden Teutonic philosophers, the German Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) writing on the subject, as later would the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951).  Martin Heidegger (1889–1976, who was only briefly a Nazi) called it the “fundamental question of metaphysics”.  The English-speaking school, more tied to the empirical, noted the matter.

Duumvirate

Duumvirate (pronounced doo-uhm-ver-it)

(1) A coalition of two persons holding the same office at the head of government.

(2) The office or government of two such persons.

1656: From the Latin duumvirātus (one of two officers or magistrates jointly exercising the same public function), the construct being duumviri (the office held in the Roman Republic by two joint magistrates and plural of duumvir) + -atus.  Duumviri was from the Old Latin, the construct being duum (of two) + vir (man) and a duumvir was one who served in the office of a duumvirate.  The Latin suffix -ātus was from the Proto-Italic -ātos, from the primitive Indo-European -ehtos.  It’s regarded as a "pseudo-participle" and perhaps related to –tus although though similar formations in other Indo-European languages indicate it was distinct from it already in early Indo-European times.  It was cognate with the Proto-Slavic –atъ and the Proto-Germanic -ōdaz (the English form being -ed (having).  The feminine form was –āta, the neuter –ātum and it was used to form adjectives from nouns indicating the possession of a thing or a quality.  In Ancient Greece, a similar polity was a diarchy, the construct in the Ancient Greek being δι- (di-) (double) + -αρχία, (-arkhía) (ruled).

In political science, a diarchy (Greek) or duumvirate (Latin) is a form of government characterized by co-rule, two people ruling a polity together, either lawfully or by collusion & force and such leaders can be styled as co-rulers.  Inventions in language have occurred such as biarchy and tandemocracy though none became common use, unlike co-regency, used still to describe a monarchy temporarily controlled by two.  Under the Raj, diarchy was often used to refer to the system of “shared rule”, a colonial fix of which the British were the cynical masters.  Native Indian representation in government had long been a feature of British India and it was formalized in the Indian Councils Act (1892), the powers further devolved in the Government of India Acts (1919 (implementing the Montague-Chelmsford reforms) & 1935).

Under the Raj, provincial governments included British members (executive councilors) and Indian members (ministers from the legislative council).  So that administrative authority could be conferred on Indian members, the diarchy was introduced and with it the concept of transferred and reserved subjects.  The transferred subjects included law and order, revenue & justice; the reserved subjects included education & public health etc so in this way, so typical of British colonial rule, Indians gained control over large parts of the government which dealt directly with the people while authority over critical matters (money, defense, foreign affairs, internal order) remained under the purview of British executive councilors.  Diarchy operated in the Indian provinces between 1921- 1937 before being replaced by provincial autonomy in 1937.

However, those uses on the sub-continent reflect the post-classical practice to use both duumvirate and diarchy to describe just about any arrangement where the highest office or institution in a state (and often other places too) is not in the hands of a single individual.  A duumvirate, as originally defined, referred to the offices of the various duumviri (of two) under the Roman Republic and while there were later triumvirates (of three) and beyond, it was usually the Roman practice to use duumvirate in the sense of “rule by more than one”.

A classical duumvirate is obviously still possible but while instances of genuine co-rule are rare, the shared model has proved a useful tactic in states where the lines of geographic definition don’t align with tribal, religious or ethnic identity.  There, presidencies can be shared, sometimes on a sequential basis (which is another expression of co-rule) but also simultaneously, an illustrative example of which is the office of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a three-member body which collectively serves as head of state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Each member elected from a defined region (the Bosniak and Croat members from a joint constituency in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serb from the Republika Srpska.  The office of the presidency exists as the collective head with one member elected as chairperson which is rotational, changing every eight months; the incumbent thus primus inter pares (first among equals).

Even when an arrangement of two is described as a duumvirate, and may contain some elements of co-rule, it need not of necessity be a system of co-equal rule.  Gough Whitlam (1916-2014; Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975), always anxious to flaunt his learning before his adoring acolytes, eagerly dug up duumvirate to describe the two man ministry which, for a fortnight, constituted the first Whitlam government but it was merely a device of convenience, the deputy prime-minister (Lance Barnard, 1919-1997, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1974) a mere cipher for Whitlam’s initiatives.  The so-called duumvirate actually turned out to be the best days of the Whitlam government; from there it was mostly downhill.  It was a thing made possible only because the results in some seats wouldn’t be known immediately after the 1972 election and thus the names available to be included in the ministry wouldn’t be known for two weeks.  This gave Whitlam the excuse he needed; the Australian Labor Party (ALP) having been in opposition for twenty-three years, he wasn’t prepared to wait.  Thus, Whitlam had the governor-general swear him in as prime minister and Barnard as deputy leader, the two men sharing the twenty-seven portfolios during the fortnight before a full cabinet could be determined.  The “duumvirate” proved a model of administrative efficiency, not something much said of the subsequent cabinet (1972-1975) which, the ALP then in an “egalitarian” phase, insisted should contain all members of the ministry, not the traditional dozen-odd with the others serving in an “outer ministry”.  It was an unwieldy apparatus and the ALP has not subsequently repeated the error; there have been plenty of other mistakes just not that one.

Australia’s tradition of coalition governments has also tempted many to use hyphenated forms to describe administrations although the practice has never been consistent.  The short-lived Reid-McLean ministry (1904-1905) was an example but the moniker was both something of a necessity to distinguish it from the previous Reid ministry in New South Wales (NSW) and a tribute to what sounds one of the more improbable political coalitions: Free traders & protectionists.  Tellingly, it didn’t last long.  There was also the more enduring Bruce-Page government (1923-1929) although it’s only subsequent Country (National) Party leaders who have been inclined to adopt the style.

The constitutional arrangements of a diarchic kingdom are (as in the classic game) reflected in Diarchic Chess, played on the Gustavian board, invented by Gustav III of Sweden (1746–1792; King of Sweden 1771-1792).  The enemy witch has the friendly pieces and pawns under her spell, rendering them unable to attack an enemy king (the bewitchment does not affect the friendly witch and kings).  The only way the spell can be broken is for the friendly witch to sacrifice herself so, when either witch disappears, the spell is broken for all pieces on the board. The witch moves like a rook but can also make one step on the diagonal; princesses move like a bishop and can make one step on the orthogonal; the kings cannot castle; the pawn promotes to queen and other pieces, but not to witch.  The goal remains checkmate.

The kings being immune from attack (except by the witch), they are powerful attacking pieces and it’s not hard to believe the rules of the game were written by a king on his throne.  However, the game would suit not all kings because to take advantage of the rules, a king must be both (1) aggressive early in the game and (2) maintain a position cognizant the enemy witch may sacrifice herself, making the king suddenly vulnerable to the enemy pieces.  King Gustav never indicated if he'd enjoyed some experience of self-sacrificing witches or if the rule was just an imaginative flourish but it is a vital aspect of Diarchic Chess, in one move perhaps transforming the contest.  In practice, it’s a radically different game.

Formalism

Formalism (pronounced fawr-muh-liz-uhm)

(1) Strict adherence to, or observance of, prescribed or traditional forms, as in music, poetry and art.

(2) In religion, a strong attachment to external forms and observances.

(3) In philosophy (ethics), a doctrine that acts are in themselves right or wrong regardless of consequences.

(4) In literary theory, an approach to the interpretation of texts focused on the structure rather than the content, context of its origin or reception.

(5) In mathematics (formal logic), a doctrine that mathematics, including the logic used in proofs, can be based on the formal manipulation of symbols without regard to their meaning (the mathematical or logical structure of a scientific argument as distinguished from its subject matter; the theory a statement has no meaning but that its symbols, regarded as physical objects, exhibit a structure that has useful applications).

(6) A scrupulous or excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality or content.

(7) In Marxist criticism, scrupulous or excessive adherence to artistic technique at the expense of social values etc; also a view adopted by some non-Marxist critical theorists).

(8) In performance art, theatre a deliberately stylized mode of production.

(9) In both structural engineering and computer science, the notation, and its structure, in (or by) which information is expressed.

1830–1840: The construct was formal + -ism.  Formal was from the Middle English formel, from the Old French formel, from the Latin formalis, from forma (form) of unknown origin but possibly from the Etruscan morma, from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) (shape, fashion, appearance, outward form, contour, figure), dissimilated as formīca and possibly formīdō.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek –ismos & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, often through the Latin –ismus & -isma, though sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Greek.  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form action nouns from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Although actual use of the word formalism dates only from its adoption (1830s) in critical discourse, disputes related to the matter can be found in texts since antiquity in fields as diverse as agriculture, literature and theology.  Formalism is a noun, formalist is a noun & adjective, formalistic is an adjective and formalistically is an adverb; the noun plural is formalists.

The Russian Formalists

In literary theory, the term “form” is used of the “structure & shape” and the manner in which it is constructed, as opposed to the substance (theme, topic and such).  Form and substance are so intertwined as to be inseparable (although that hasn’t stopped some authors of “experimental” works trying to prove otherwise) but long before the post-modernists made deconstruction a thing, the two strands separately had been assessed and analysed.  The other way the word is used is as a synonym of genre (novella, essay, play etc).  Formalism was different; it was a literary theory with origins in the early Soviet Union of the 1920s, the practitioners and followers labelled “formalists”, a pejorative term which implied limitations.  In the way things then were done by the Bolshevists, Formalism as an identifiable entity faded quickly and fell into desuetude by late in the decade; movements which of which comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) didn’t approve had bleak prospects.

Influenced by the Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915) and The Society for the Study of Poetic Language (1916), Formalism was in 1917 founded by literary theorist, & writer Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) and author & political satirist Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) with the then novel assertion art primarily was a matter of technique, the style not merely a method of execution but also the object of the art.  In an example of the way political forces in the post-tsarist state evolved, although Formalism began in the year of revolutions as something with the obvious socialist theme of the artist as a “worker” or “artisan”, its credos came under suspicion in the Kremlin because it was thought to have been captured by authors, artists & composers who found intoxicating the idea their work could be an exercise in pure technique, sometimes of such intricacy that it was only their colleagues who could understand, the public left unmoved or baffled.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

Reflecting what was going on in intellectual circles in Moscow, the Formalists were interested in applying to literary criticism what had come to be understood as the “scientific method” and were dismissive of the role of ideas, emotions, & actions (and “reality” in general) in defining what was specifically “literary” about a text.  What this meant was any distinction between form and content ceased to be relevant and the writer became a kind of cipher, re-working available literary devices and conventions, some practitioners even holding there were no poets or other literary figures, just the output, encapsulated in Shklovsky’s pithy definition of literature as “the sum total of all the stylistic devices employed in it”.  Shklovsky was the most influential figure in the early days of the movement and he was influenced by the Futurists who had been drawn to the speed and mechanical creations of modernity, something manifested in his concept of ostranenie (making strange, later to be called defamiliarization) which was an attempt to divorce art from conceptions such as beauty, elegance or other conventional benchmarks.

Despite the implications of that, Formalism was dynamic (and in the way movements tend to be) schismatic, a theory of narrative also developed which made a distinction between plot and story, the technique adopted reflecting the approach of the Futurists’ understanding of machinery.  Syuzbet (the plot) referred to the order & manner in which events were presented in the narrative while fabuh (the story) tracked the chronological sequence of events.  Another of the Formalists infused with the tenets of Futurism was the literary critic & theorist Boris Tomashevsky (1890–1957) who used the term modf to denote the smallest unit of plot and distinguished between “bound” & “free” motifs, the former one which the story absolutely requires while the latter was inessential; it was a model as familiar to engineers then as it would be to software developers now.  Formalists of course regarded content as subordinate to the formal devices used in its construction and this dependence on external “non-literary assumptions” was called “motivation”, and a text’s motivation was defined by Shklovsky as the extent to which it was dependent on non-literary assumptions, an example of a work totally without motivation cited as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (in nine volumes, 1759–1767) by the Anglo-Irish novelist & Anglican cleric Laurence Sterne (1713–1768).  Whether or not one concurs with Shklovsky’s absolutism, in writing Tristram Shandy, Sterne used so many devices and techniques that had the term “mash-up” then existed, it would have been applied and it can be argued it was with that work the distinction between the techniques of plagiarism and sampling can best be identified.  Formalism’s life was brief but the churning of theory was constant and later the concept of “device” gave way to the notion of “function”, depending on the purpose or mode or genre; it was no longer the device per se which was defamiliarizing but its function in the work.  While comrade Stalin was content he’d killed off Formalism, its elements and deconstructive tools took root in the academic reaches of Western literary criticism and if not a fork, post-modernism is at least a cul-de-sac.

Comrade Stalin, comrade Shostakovich and Formalism

Comrade Shostakovich at his dacha.

Comrade Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR, 1924-1953) didn’t invent the regime’s criticism of formalism but certainly made it famous after comrade Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was denounced in the Soviet newspaper Pravda (Truth) in January 1936, after the Moscow performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.  Stalin didn’t like music he couldn’t whistle and the complex strains of Shostakovich’s opera, sometimes meandering, sometimes strident, certainly didn’t permit that; he labeled the composition формализм (formalism), "chaos instead of music", a self-indulgence of technique by a composer interested only in the admiration of other composers, an audience of no value in the school of Soviet realism.  It’s believed the Pravda article may have been written by Stalin himself and he used the word "formalism" in the sense it was understood English; formality being the observance of forms, formalism the disposition to make adherence to them an obsession.  To Stalin, the formal rules of composition were but a means to an end and the only legitimate end was socialist realism; anything other than that "an attack on the people".  Lest it be thought the defeat of fascism in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) might have mellowed his views in such matters, Stalin at the 1948 party congress made sure the point was hammered home in the Communist Party's brutish way:  

"Comrades, while realistic music is written by the People's composers, formalistic music is written by composers who are against the People.  Comrades, one must ask why it is that realistic music is always written by composers of the People? The People's composers write realistic music simply due to the fact that being by nature realists right to their very core, they simply cannot help writing music that is realistic, while those anti-People composers, being by nature unrepentant formalists, cannot help... cannot help... cannot help writing music that is formalistic."

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

In the Soviet Union, producing or performing stuff hated by Stalin was not good career move.  Shostakovich completed his Fourth Symphony in C minor, Opus 43, in May 1936 and, even after the attack in Pravda, planned to stage its premiere in Leningrad December but found the orchestra unwilling to risk incurring the Kremlin’s wrath and almost as soon as rehearsals began, the orchestra's management cancelled the performance, issuing a statement saying comrade Shostakovich had withdrawn the work.  Actual responsibility for the decision remains unclear but it was certainly in accord with the views of the Kremlin and not until 1961, almost a decade on from Stalin’s death, was it performed.

All is forgiven: Soviet postage stamp issued in 1981 to honor 75^th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth.

Shostakovich became a realist, his response to denunciation the melodic Fifth Symphony in D minor, Opus 47.  Premiered in November 1937 in Leningrad, it was a resounding triumph, attracting a standing ovation that lasted more than thirty minutes.  The following January, just before its first performance in Moscow, an article, under the composer’s name, appeared in the local newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva in which he described the Fifth Symphony as "…a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism."  Whether Shostakovich actually wrote the piece isn’t known but there’s never been any doubt it’d never have been published without Stalin’s approval and the success of the Fifth Symphony re-personed Shostakovich.  Whatever it lacked in glasnost (openness), it made up for in perestroika (restructuring) and the party engineered his rehabilitation as carefully as it had his fall a couple of years earlier, anxious to show how those bowing its demands could be rewarded as easily and fully as dissidents could be punished.